


All Too Well

by tabacoychanel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Sibling Incest, Sibling Love, Sorry Not Sorry, gratuitous Taylor Swift lyrics, these kids i swear to god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacoychanel/pseuds/tabacoychanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya visits Jon at college.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [okieday17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okieday17/gifts).



At breakfast her mother reminds her to pack extra socks, as if she’s going away to camp. (The first time she went away to camp, it was Jon who drove the two hours to Maine to fetch her, as her father was in New York on business and her mother was in the hospital with Bran.) Arya gives a noncommittal grunt.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off at the train station, sweetheart?”

Arya’s mouth is full of Cocoa Puffs. She shakes her head. “I’ll take my bike.”

She takes her bike everywhere - school, library, fencing lessons. That’s everywhere, more or less. Occasionally she goes to the bike shop but Gendry doesn’t let her use his employee discount, even after she points out that Sansa has no qualms about doing the same. Gendry looks at her steadily and asks, “How long does Sansa expect to work at J. Crew?” _Long enough to be crowned valedictorian, leave this town and never look back_ is the answer, but Arya gets defensive when other people criticize her sister. She shrugs and reaches over for a bite of his donut. She knows that Gendry has busted his butt for Tobho Mott since long before child labor laws permitted him to be paid, that he wants to open his own shop someday. Still, she thinks it’s manifestly unfair that she could use new brake pads much more than she could use another identical cashmere sweater from J. Crew.

When she gets to the station she discovers that cyclists aren’t allowed on the train during “peak” hours, which means she has to wait another forty minutes before another train comes along. She perches on a bench, pops her earbuds in, composes a message to Jon but doesn’t send it.

She has promised to call her mother when she gets to South Station. “Where’s Jon?” Catelyn demands sharply, and Arya considers lying, but Catelyn might insist on speaking to him so she says, "He’s meeting me later,” and there is an ominous silence on the other end.

"Mom, don’t. He’s busy. He’s got classes.”

“So busy he leaves his fifteen-year-old sister to fend for herself?”

Arya is suddenly, profoundly grateful that it’s her mother and not her father who is checking up on her today. Her father knows perfectly well that where Arya’s safety is concerned, Jon is as dependable as death or taxes.

By the time she arrives in Cambridge with its glorious, ubiquitous bike lanes it’s begun to drizzle, and in the distance she hears the unmistakable rumble of thunder. The restaurant she is looking for is in Central Square, where there are plenty of bike racks. She snakes a cable lock through the frame and the front wheel, then ducks inside to order a bowl of noodles while she waits for Jon. She’s already entered the message - all she has to do now is press “send.” _Meet me at the place we went for Robb’s birthday_.

The storm worsens. The patrons wait for an opening to dash into vehicles, subways, other buildings. Arya has fished out all the noodles and is slurping broth. She glances up and there he is, his jacket drenched and his face long, leaning down to pull her into a one-armed hug, leaving raindrops on her cheek. “You should have told me you were coming,”

“I wasn’t sure you’d want me,” she admits. _I figured if I hurled myself onto your doorstep you couldn’t turn me away_.

“You know better than that.” He sounds hurt. Which is ridiculous, considering that he’s the one who’s been ignoring her calls. “Does your mom know where you are?”

“Yes. Except she thinks you invited me.”

Jon’s expression doesn’t change, but Arya expects she knows what he’s thinking. _He’d put me on the first train back if he could do it without Mom realizing I lied to her_. “Arya, what are you doing here?”

There are a million answers to that, and none. She gives him the first one that comes into her head. “Sansa thinks you met a girl.”

“Sansa wants to set me up with a girl, you mean.”

“You’re not seeing anyone?”

“Without consulting Sansa? I wouldn’t dream of it.” A knot of tension relaxes in her stomach. “Wait, since when do you and Sansa sit around speculating about my love life?”

“Since sixth grade,” she replies. “And I wish you would just _tell_ me why you’re doing this. Just tell me why you’re mad at me and I’ll go home, okay?”

“I wouldn’t know how to be mad at you.” His grey eyes are earnest when they meet hers.

“Ignoring me, then.”

“I warned you I wasn’t going to have much time my first semester.”

“Which is why you play World of Warcraft with Bran every weekend.”

He shuts his eyes briefly and turns away. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go. Jon’s never been _evasive_ with her - exasperated, sure; all the time. But he’s always straight with her about what’s bothering him. “I’m sorry, Arya. God, you have no idea how sorry. I’d only make it worse by letting you stay, though.”

“Nothing could be worse than this disappearing act of yours,” she counters. “Do you understand? _Nothing_.”

And maybe he does finally get it, because he goes very still for a moment before assenting. “All right. Let’s get out of here. We can talk in my room.”

“What about my bike?”

“You take the bus back to campus; Sam will let you into the room. I’ll be right behind you on the bike.”

“Your legs are too long.” She eyes him dubiously.

Jon looks at her like she’s grown three heads. “If you think I’m going to let my little sister ride around Cambridge in the middle of a thunderstorm, you’re out of your mind.”

Arya doesn’t like being told what to do. But she likes knowing that he cares.

 _Not_ , she muses later, on the bus, _that he has a choice_. You can’t just decide to stop being siblings with someone the way you can stop being friends, or lovers, or golf partners (there had been an almighty row back when Dad and Uncle Robert dissolved their twenty-year partnership). If such a thing were possible she would gladly take a break from Sansa at least twice a week, and wouldn’t that be a relief. There has never - so far as Arya can recall - been a time when she wishes she wasn’t bound to Jon by ties stronger than friendship or love. _But does he wish now he could be rid of me?_

:::

 

Sansa’s underwear comes in every cut and color under the sun. Arya watches her fold each item with military precision. _She used to do that even_ _before_ _she worked at J. Crew_. Arya’s offer of assistance is met by a scowl. “First of all, you have orange Cheetoh dust all over your fingers - mind you don’t get it on the carpet, by the way. Second of all, I’ve never seen you fold underwear in your life. You just shove it into the drawer.”

“Much easier that way,” concedes Arya as she pops a Cheetoh stick into her mouth. She gives Sansa’s swivel chair another twirl, and her sister’s scowl deepens.

“If you want me to look for that lip gloss later you’d better not break my chair. Or leave crumbs all over my carpet.”

“I’m just trying to help. I haven’t got all day here.”

“What’s the rush?”

“I gotta pack.”

Sansa shoots Arya an incredulous look. “Seriously, you’re going to visit _Jon_. It’s not exactly tea with the queen.”

“I’d rather visit Jon than the queen.”

Sansa rolls her eyes. “Of course you would.”

Arya finishes the bag of Cheetohs, crumples it up and marches through the connecting bathroom to her own room, where she tosses it. Sansa has a rule about no food or tampons in her trash bin. By the time she returns, Sansa has sorted everything into several piles; half the garments on the bed are black.

“Do you really need eighty pairs of black underwear?” asks Arya.

“Black underwear is sexy.”

“So … like, white underwear with hearts and flowers isn’t?”

“Nope.”

Arya chews her lip thoughtfully. All her panties are white, or flowery, or both. Certainly none of them are _lacy_.

Sansa adds, “I mean, it doesn’t matter unless somebody is going to see you with your clothes off, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I’m _not_ worried about it,” insists Arya, a little too forcefully.

With unerring elder-sisterly instinct, Sansa glances up. “Arya, if this is about Gendry …”

“It’s not, okay? There is absolutely nothing going on between me and Gendry. How many times do I have to tell you that?” She stands up and pushes the chair back towards Sansa’s desk. “Jesus Christ. Why do you have to stick your nose into everything? All I want to do is borrow your lip gloss so I can look nice for Jon.”

“For Jon?” echoes Sansa, frowning. “Why would you …” She stops.

Arya waits for her sister’s expression to change from baffled to horrified. Except that it never does. When Sansa’s frown clears, she looks more concerned than anything else.

That’s the last straw. She can deal with Sansa’s scorn and Sansa’s revlusion but not this, not Sansa’s sympathy. Arya turns around and flees.


	2. Chapter 2

They go out on Friday because Robb’s birthday falls on a Wednesday. Arya’s parents are even persuaded to extend her curfew, although they draw the line at letting Bran go. Sansa drops by briefly but doesn’t sit down or order any food. Sansa doesn’t exactly move in the same circles as Robb and Jon.

Neither, of course, does Arya. She can tell that nobody knows what to make of her presence, and she sticks to Jon’s side like a burr. This is it. This is the last weekend in August. Arya has been counting down the days to the start of the fall semester since Jon and Robb got their acceptance letters in March.

Most people count down the days until they get to go on a cruise to the Bahamas, or see Beyonce live in concert. Well, this is the most momentous thing that has ever happened in Arya’s life. She remembers asking plaintively, “Why can’t you just live at home and go to a state school?” and the way his jaw had tightened and she’d immediately been stricken with guilt for bringing it up because wasn’t eighteen years under her mother’s roof enough? That Jon is not going far is small consolation. A one-hour drive might as well be a trip to the moon for a girl without a vehicle or a license to operate one. And what if in a few years he finds an apartment of his own, what if he never comes home again, what if he does come home but it’s not the same, what if, what if, what if.

This is Arya’s creation myth: Before there was anything, there was Jon. She does not remember and cannot conceive of an existence prior to him, _excised_ of him, since her earliest memories are of him. It’s not something she ever mentions to her mother. It’s certainly not her mother’s fault that Bran was born so soon after Arya, Bran who was so fragile that they despaired of his chances, Bran who in his first five years of life spent more time in the hospital than out of it. Technically, it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Technically, it was a miracle that Bran survived at all. Arya is just grateful for the miracle that gave her Jon.

Arya has never had a best friend. Sansa puts it down to her being an inveterate tomboy who disdains girly pursuits, but that’s not it. The concept of a best friend - the way Sansa describes it, anyhow - sounds alarmingly arbitrary. Sometimes Sansa goes through three different best friends in one school year. What are you supposed to do when you break up with the person you’ve confided everything in? How are you supposed to go about finding a suitable person in the first place - how do you confide at all in someone you don’t know? These are questions she has always wanted to ask Sansa because she has never had to find the answers out for herself.

As she sits there picking mushrooms out of her salad and transferring them to Jon’s plate, Arya resolves never to find the answers out ever.

Instead of splitting the check nineteen ways Theon Greyjoy insists he’s treating, which is exactly the kind of flamboyantly generous gesture you would expect from Theon Greyjoy. Arya is not surprised when Jon pretends to have forgotten his phone so he can double back to slip the waitress a twenty.

“Cheapass motherfucker left her _ten dollars_  on two hundred,” he informs Arya, who is waiting for him outside, with a snort of disgust. Jon’s first job was busing tables.

The others are standing around in the parking lot, some of them lighting up cigarettes or checking their phones.

“So do we want to go straight to the Umbers’ or do we want to stop at the store first, pick some stuff up?” Thank God for Dacey. They might have stood around for half an hour otherwise.

“It’s too early for that,” objects Theon.

Dacey tilts her head. “It’s too early to throw a party for Robb?”

“Oh, we’ll do that later. Right now I have a better idea. What would you all say,” he casts a glance around the circle, eyes gleaming expectantly, “to a little clubbing over at the Machine? No cover charge tonight; I got you guys.”

There is an audible lull as everyone processes this. Arya tenses.

Wendel Manderly whistles appreciatively. “No cover charge? How’d you manage that?”

“No big deal, my old man pulled some strings.” This remark does not sound nearly as offhand as Theon thinks it does. He is beaming. Meanwhile Arya is clenching her fists so hard that her nails leave little half-moons on her palm.

Jon says, “Hold on, I thought we were going to the Umbers’. I thought that was the plan.”

“Jon, the cover’s normally forty bucks,” their cousin Torrhen points out. This is because the Machine is the hottest nightclub in town; on the one Friday a month when they open their doors to the Under–21 crowd the place is invariably packed.

Dacey adds helpfully, “They even have those massive flat-screen TVs in the lounge if you want to keep an eye on the game.”

Arya happens to know that the only game Jon cares about is his fantasy football league, where Dacey is beating everyone by a handy margin, but by now Robb has figured out what the problem is. “The Machine is eighteen-plus, isn’t it?” he says slowly, his gaze locking with Jon’s.

There is a thing that Robb and Jon do where they hold a whole conversation without words in the space of a heartbeat. By the time she catches on it’s already over - the two of them embrace, pound each other on the back, Jon says, “We’ll see you at home then” and that’s it. Arya remains rooted to the spot because she hasn’t been able to move a muscle since Theon proposed this hideous plan. Jon takes his leave of Dacey and the rest, grabs Arya’s arm and steers her toward the car.

“Let go of me,” she hisses. His grip slackens but he rests his hand lightly below her elbow. What is he afraid she’ll do, throw a two-hour tantrum like she did the first time Robb and Jon went over to Theon’s house for a sleepover? She had been five years old then. Things have changed.

In the car she says, “I shouldn’t have come.”

He says, “Robb wanted you to come.”

“Because _you_ wanted me to come. And don’t tell me you’d rather babysit me than go to a club with Robb and Dacey and all them, because I don’t believe you.”

“If you’re claiming I prefer Theon’s company to yours, I think that’s a pretty baseless accusation.” He glances over to gauge her reaction.

“That’s not what this is about!” When he is inhumanly calm and reasonable like this, it makes her _furious_. It’s not as if she’s a child who needs placating. She’s a girl whose world is on the verge of falling apart, and the harder she tries to cling to the way things were, the faster it seems to crumble. “I shouldn’t have come ’cause I knew it was all kids in your year, you all are going off to college in another week and I should have let you have your big going-away bash without trying to tag along like I always do.” She glares at him, daring him to deny it.

“Has it occurred to you,” he says mildly, “that Theon is an asshole?”

Arya rolls her eyes. “No kidding. But you can’t just ditch your friends to drive me home every time it happens. The world is full of assholes.”

Jon does not dispute this. Jon has always known how to get at the root of her anxiety. “Arya,” he sighs, “when have I ever hurt you?”

She doesn’t have an answer to that. She wishes he would stop asking questions with self-evident answers.

“All right,” he continues. “How many times do I have to choose you? How many times is it going to take to convince you?”

“Oh for crying out loud will you stop pretending that nothing is going to change when you go to college?” she snaps back.

And is rewarded by the sight of Jon losing his unruffled veneer. “So we should just pretend I’m going away forever, is that it? So you and I will end up like what, like your mom and your uncle Edmure? I’ll see you at holidays, send a card on your birthday. Is that what you want?”

“I _want_ us to stay like this. Like we are right now. But I know we can’t because you can’t keep choosing me over Robb, over all the new people you’ll meet at school. You know you can’t.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not like that. Robb and I were on the same page today.”

“Yeah,” she agrees bitterly, “you guys are practically psychic. Look at what you did back there - the two of you agreed to bundle me off without needing to exchange a single word!”

“So? What would be the point of you and me being psychic? I already know you inside out.”

Which is the reason they are in this mess in the first place. Arya feels the sting of tears and resolutely bites them back. “I never told you this but one time I heard Mom on the phone with someone and she said something about how my attachment to you was _unnatural_.” She looks up at him. “It’s not, is it?”

“No,” he tells her firmly. He reaches over to brush her cheek, to dry the tears that haven’t fallen yet. “Listen to me. Robb isn’t you. Sam is - I don’t know what I’d do without Sam, but he isn’t you. Bran is a treasure and a delight, but the point is, he is not you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And as for these people at college I’ve never even met, what the hell do they have to do with you and me?”

“I don’t know, Jon. I don’t even know what ‘you and me’ means anymore. When my mom said that what she said about us, I thought …” She can’t bring herself to finish the sentence, to utter aloud the possibility that everything she knows is wrong, that her heart is false and her safe harbor is poisoned.

“Hey, hey, look at me. Shhhh. I’ll tell you what it means. It means I’m yours, that’s all. I've always been yours. I always will be.”

For the remainder of the way home he keeps one hand on the steering wheel and the fingers of the other laced with hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading this fic and caring about these kids - honestly the only reason I write is so I can cry about these kids.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s fortunate that Jon and Sam are rooming together this year. Sam finds Arya a clean towel and then leaves without asking or volunteering anything beyond pleasantries. After she showers, she sits on Jon’s bed and reads his comics.

She scrambles up when she hears the key in the lock. She isn’t sure what she’s expecting - Sam, maybe, come back for a book he forgot - but what she gets is Jon, his clothes plastered to him like a second skin.

“Hey.”

There is a puddle forming where he’s standing. He leans against the door, dropping the sodden bundle of his jacket at his feet.

“I left your bike in the laundry room. Since there was no place to chain it up outside.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to take a shower."

“Okay.”

When he turns around to peel the shirt off his back she watches him.

There is something terribly wrong with her. She knows it, has known it since she cut seventh period to buy a pair of black panties at Target, but she sees it now written plain as day in the shape of Jon’s shoulder blades. She closes her eyes because if she looks at him any longer she might actually try to inhale him, and only opens them again when she hears the click of the door closing.

When he comes back he’s wearing sweatpants and his hair falls in glossy black ringlets over his eyes. Arya tells him, “You should be a shampoo model.”

For a split second he looks caught off guard. He says, “That’s Plan B."

“No, seriously, do you know how much time Sansa spends on her hair? You don’t even _do_ anything to yours. It’s not fair.”

“You should just get in the bathroom first and camp out there. Used to do it to Robb when he took too long in the mornings.”

“Does Robb even know one end of a straight iron from the other?”

Jon shrugs and hangs up his towel. “They did vote him Best Dressed,” he says, as if it implies superior hair-styling abilities. Arya is glad she didn’t reapply her borrowed lip gloss while Jon was in the shower.

“Do you miss him?” she asks. _Do you miss me?_

“Arya,” he says, and it’s a warning. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about Robb. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about Arya. Maybe - and this is the really scary possibility - he doesn’t want to talk _to_ her.

He putters around, picking clothes up and tossing them in the hamper, before perching on the edge of Sam’s bed instead of his own. Arya stares, unbelieving, at the expanse of tiled floor that separates the two beds.

“I thought - ” He presses one hand down in the middle of the mattress. “Sam has bad breath. Not so you’d notice. Not -okay, if you slept on his sheets you’d definitely notice. And these are the only sheets we have. I thought I’d let you have my bed since you’re used to me.”

He wants her to sleep in a bed that smells like him while he sleeps on the other side of the room. When she’s figured out how to get words past the lump in her throat, Arya says, “Sam didn’t mention when he’d be back.”

“I told him to go to the library.”

Is the library open 24/7? Does Sam have his own cot there? Arya bites her tongue because it seems churlish to blame Sam when Sam has been the soul of kindness. If his no-questions-asked policy is as generous towards Jon as it is towards Arya, she owes him in a major way. “Thank you.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “You can thank Sam.”

“For not sending me home,” she clarifies.

“Dad called while I was en route.” His gaze drifts toward the window, the rain battering away outside. “I told him everything was fine.” A pause. “She must’ve been worried.”

Her mother never calls her father at work unless it’s one of Bran’s (many) medical emergencies.

“Look, I’m sorry about the wrath of the parentals but you didn’t leave me any choice, did you?” She thinks of thirteen voicemails, a term paper’s worth of one-sided texts.

“It’s not that. I just. I wish you hadn’t lied to her. She’s your mother.” Jon's grey eyes are reproachful.

“I cannot _believe_ you right now,” she declares. “You, of all all people. Defending her. After everything she’s done. After the way she’s treated you.”

“She wasn’t always … the way she is. You don’t remember. Before the rest of you came along, she tried - I mean, it wasn’t like she made no difference between me and Robb. It wasn’t ever like that. She didn’t love me. She didn’t hate me, either.” And the implacable impulse to fairness, even towards those who have never been fair to him, is so utterly _Jon_ that Arya wonders how anyone can look at him and not love him so much their lungs could burst with it.

“You were _two_ when Sansa was born,” she protests. “You can’t possibly remember.”

“I was five the year Bran was born. That’s what I remember. Her coming home from the hospital with him after God knows how many days or weeks, and handing him off to Dad so she could scoop you up, and then Sansa, and then Robb clinging to her leg, except you cried to be put down the minute she picked you up. The look on her face … You were crawling, by then. You crawled straight to me.” If Jon looks absolutely wretched as he’s telling her this, he also can’t help looking a little bit proud.

“Oh,” breathes Arya.

“It’s not like it happened overnight, okay? After it - after the first time, she tried harder. She would read to you, before she tucked you in. You even seemed to like it. The problem was, you liked my voice better. When you fell down and scraped your knee it wasn’t her you called for, it was me.”

 _It still is_. A lifetime of habit exhorts her to run to Jon for comfort. She swallows. “I didn’t know. It’s my fault." _My fault that my mother hates you_.

“No, it’s not.” His voice is raw with some emotion she can’t place. “None of us can help the way we’re made.”

“Why are you telling me this now? You never said anything before.”

He scrubs a hand over his face. Instead of answering he changes the topic. “You asked me if I missed Robb. Of course I miss Robb, I miss him like I’d miss my arm.”

Arya grows very still.

“Let me ask you something. Who’s older, me or Robb?”

“Robb by three days,” she supplies automatically.

“Robb was a C-section. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Your mom still had a catheter trailing out of her when your dad left her there by herself. He left because of _my_ mom.”

The words _your dad_ sound jarring in Jon’s mouth. “Dad wouldn’t - ” She begins indignantly; catches herself when she remembers why he actually left. “He left because of Aunt Lyanna’s car accident! He was the next of kin.”

“In a manner of speaking, sure. He left because of me. I was the only survivor of that car accident. They had to cut me out of her, and in the end they couldn’t save her.”

It takes her a moment to process what this means. “ _Jon_ ,” she demands sharply, "when did they tell you?”

“The day I turned eighteen.”

“You should’ve told me.” That part is almost as unsettling as the _fact_ of what he didn’t tell her.

“I thought about it. I went out and I drove around for half the night and I came this close to running over somebody’s dog. Arya, think it through. Why did they keep it a secret?”

“They never talk about her. Your mother. I thought, it was because Mom was jealous of her, whoever she was, but if it was only Aunt Lyanna then why -”

He laughs. “You think that’s how jealousy works? You think there’s only one kind?”

And no, it’s not that Arya thinks that.

“Look at it this way,” says Jon. “Your father left his unconscious wife and newborn son to be at his dying sister’s bedside. It’s not me your mom can’t stand; it’s the rest of you and your attachment to me. If it was just Dad, well, that would be one thing. Arya, she carried you guys inside her for a combined, like, four years. You all belonged to her first.”

Arya cocks her head to one side. “You called him Dad. You don’t mean …?”

“No, no, that’s gross. I call him Dad because he raised me. He went to Lyanna because he loved her; her fiancé had been in the car with her so there was no one else.”

“But it would be _gross_ ,” she repeats, “if he had loved her that way.”

“Arya -”

“I don’t _care_ , okay? I don’t care what people think, and by 'people' I mean Mom and Dad who apparently kept this from us for _our entire fucking lives_. After that kind of mindfuck you expect me to feel _guilty_? Fuck. Do you realize what this even means? It means you’re - you’re my … ”

“I’m just yours,” he interrupts smoothly, his tone matter-of-fact.

There is not enough room in her ribcage for the feelings that are supposed to reside there. “I was yours from the start. Whatever my mom thinks.”

He says, “I know.”

    :::

When Sam comes back from the library they are curled around each other on Jon’s bed, comic books strewn all over the place.


End file.
